Reverse Batman dons cop uniform by day, weapons of words by night

Tuesday

Sep 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMSep 25, 2007 at 7:38 AM

Gotham City had Bruce Wayne. Metropolis, Clark Kent. Everyday men, who led secret second lives as mysterious, uniformed crimefighters, uprooting corruption in the corridors of power as often as they beat down a punk in a dirty back alley.

Kim Janssen

Gotham City had Bruce Wayne. Metropolis, Clark Kent. Everyday men, who led secret second lives as mysterious, uniformed crimefighters, uprooting corruption in the corridors of power as often as they beat down a punk in a dirty back alley.

By night, he’s something more threatening to city brass and criminals alike: an underground blogger, who by doing what every cop cannot and saying what he really thinks, has established himself as the authentic voice of the 13,000 rank-and-file officers the city claims to employ.

Among officers, SCC is easily as well known as the city’s top cop, acting Supt. Dana Starks. But beyond his own secret inner circle of trusted confidantes, nobody in the scandal-hit department actually knows who he is -- even cops he drinks with on the weekend are clueless to his real identity.

An enemy threatened to unmask him at midnight on Dec. 31, 2005, then disappeared, without trace, as has almost every other significant identifying detail.

He is -- we know this because he tells us, in an online biography -- a spouse, a parent, a cop.

We believe, but do not know, that he is a he, because he talks like a man (a computer analysis of his writing using a program called “gender genie” determined he uses 52 percent more male words than female; the program does not understand words like “asshat” or “jagoff,” which he uses frequently, and that would probably tilt the balance even further).

He belongs to the National Rifle Association and his favorite movies include “Grosse Pointe Blank,” “O Brother - Where Art Thou” and “The Godfather.”

He listens to country and bluegrass, but also enjoys rock, classical and alternative music and has reading interests that stretch from conservative bestsellers such as “100 People who are Screwing up America” to the latest Harry Potter book.

He has a dark, sarcastic sense of humor, often mocking the victims of police shootings as “altar boys” and nicknaming liberal, African-American Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell “Mope-rah.”

He hates the media, pastors, gangbangers, “aldercreatures” (as he calls them), incompetent, connected, over-promoted colleagues, the mayor, and believes these “silly people” are responsible for the ruination of his city and department.

Critics point to readers who routinely describe blacks as “animals” or “beasts” and accuse him of racism.

But he says he tries to reign in the worst excesses and thinks political correctness, cronyism and endlessly multiplying bureaucracy keep cops from where they should be: on the street busting bad guys.

Almost without exception, he takes the word of a fellow officer over that of an aggrieved civilian or a reporter.

He thinks illegal immigrants should be deported, immediately, and supports the war on terror generally and the war in Iraq, specifically.

He loves -- but is frustrated by -- the Bears, and seems to lean toward whichever Chicago baseball team is winning.

All of which is only to say that, if he didn’t write so well, he could be almost any cop in any one of the city’s 25 districts, which is exactly as he likes it.

“In our job, retaliation from the political powers is not a figment of our imagination,” he told the Southtown in an e-mail after dismissing both face-to-face and telephone interviews for fear of being unmasked. “If we don’t want to be walking a foot post at Inland Steel, we’d best be completely in the shadows.

The department routinely dismisses rumors posted by Second City Cop out of hand with a laugh, but is clearly furious at SCC, which has more than 3,000 loyal daily readers and more than 7,000 when a scandal is brewing. The blog is banned from police computers.

Pat Camden, Chicago’s gruffest police spokesman, refused to comment for this story. But on Checkerboard Chat, a widely ignored, official rival to SCC, he co-signed an open letter to SCC, fuming, “If you are proud to do the job, say so. If you don't like the job, quit. It's easy to be ‘controversial’ and ‘subversive’ when you can do so with an electronic pseudonym. If you have a legitimate complaint or concern, you are more than welcome to express an intelligent opinion. If your concern is legitimate, have the courage to sign your name.”

But when -- despite 40 calls to 911 -- police took nearly half an hour to attend a brutal clash between teens in a Scottsdale park that left one 17-year-old in a coma earlier this summer, it was SCC who broke the story of how and why as the department’s official spokesmen stalled for time.

And when, last year, aldermen tried to rename a West Side street in honor of controversial Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, it was SCC who mobilized first his fellow officers, then the national press, against them. It was SCC, not the department nor the mainstream media, who first revealed the mayor had turned down all three candidates for superintendent after Phil Cline’s resignation in August.

Almost every day brings a similar outrage or scoop: a family of a dead, armed gangbanger shot by police demanding justice on TV, a liberal columnist blaming police for the state of the city’s race-relations, the promotion of an incompetent, politically connected colleague, or a nonsense detail protecting an alderman’s house.

“What people fail to realize is we are everywhere -- something happens in motor maintenance, we hear about it; something happens at the academy, we learn about it; something happens in any one of our 25 districts, we’re going to get mail,” he says.

Reporters, and other outsiders, troll the comments section around the clock looking for stories, or to create mischief. Protected by the same cloak of anonymity that allows SCC to function, it is often impossible to distinguish the wannabes from the real police, a point SCC makes himself, repeatedly.

But if Checkerboard Chat’s stiff, humorless style -- “The incident was observed by the officers, who pursued the offender on foot” -- is the unmistakable voice of police on camera, SCC’s mix of insider scoops, locker-room gossip and fiercely conservative, politically incorrect comment is instantly recognizable as the way they talk in private.

To SCC and his readers, young, inexperienced romper-stomping officers are “hair-gels.” Lazy, burned-out cops who’ll do anything to dodge real work are “dogs.” Over-promoted, incompetent officers with family connections are “merit-babies.”

And he turns out to be right often enough to keep people coming back, offering the public an unprecedented peek behind the infamous blue wall of silence.

Candid and proud

SCC says he doesn’t care what effect the candid portrait of police life has on outsiders.

“People who hate the police hated us before,” he says. “People who supported the police were on our side from the beginning.”

He does what he does for his fellow officers alone, he adds.

“We've been portrayed as a den of malcontents, a voice of reason, a 21st century version of the bathroom wall and a necessary voice for voiceless and unconnected coppers -- we embrace most of these descriptions,” he says. “Cops have bitched since the beginning of time.”

Before modern telecommunications, officers relied on barroom chat and photocopied underground newsletters to stay abreast of gossip in other districts. With the adoption of the fax, the subversive newsletters began to circulate more widely: a friendly officer at the next district would wait by the machine and grab the newsletter, then copy and distribute it via the watch commander.

The “025 District Gallows” was a particularly successful example which “took everyone to the woodshed,” according to SCC.

But “politics being what they are,” when the publishers were found, they were dealt with harshly.

“People could lose their car assignments, they could be left behind when shifts rotated, meaning they’d work extra midnights.”

In 1998, a sergeant in the 25th District started an Internet bulletin board called Second City Copper Network, an open forum for gossip, rumor-mongering and innuendo.

“It was something everyone was completely unprepared for,” SCC said. “The readers were out of control, the bosses were in an uproar, the union did not know what had hit it.

“You had real-time criticism of the brass, people were revealing who was sleeping with who constantly; allegations of all sorts of wrongdoing in the political realm as well as the union.”

The site came crashing down in 2001 after the head of the Chicago Police Officers Association sued the sergeant over comments he’d published. But not before the issues brought out on the Web site led to the overthrow of the Fraternal Order of Police’s leadership, SCC said, adding, “We won’t lie -- some of it was fun.”

Launched in 2005

SCC launched on May 31, 2005, after a traditional printed and faxed publicity campaign in every district.

Its no-holds-barred credo was encapsulated in an H.L. Mencken quote included in an early post: “ I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless.”

Within a month, SCC was getting 1,000 visits a day.

From the beginning, SCC developed his own traditions and in-jokes. When distasteful photos surfaced of officer Chris Hitney posing, grinning, in front of a fatal Midway Airport plane crash, readers began sending cut-and-pasted digital photos of Hitney at the sites of other national tragedies, such as the Hindenberg disaster, the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations and the Iroquois Theater fire. At the height of the scandal,
the cut-and-pasted pictures made their way onto then-Supt. Cline’s desk.

In another insiders’ gag, everything good or bad that happens in the department is blamed on “Seiser,” a low- or middle-ranking and apparently blameless cop in the 24th District, who, as cop graffiti in restrooms all the way from Indiana to Wisconsin proclaims, “runs it.”

Rumors were spread, and, on occasion, debunked, often spreading panic at HQ, according to SCC.

Mostly, though, cops return to the site because they agree with SCC’s sometimes bitter, sometimes trenchant critique of the department and the city.

The department struggles because it fails to attract the right caliber of applicants, undervalues meaningful training, promotes based on clout, is constantly at war with itself, is inflexible, is run by bureaucratic “managers” rather than street-smart “bosses,” is losing or has lost too many experienced officers and is poorly armed, meaning it is too easily outgunned, SCC argues, time and time again.

Many problems -- the Virginia Tech massacre, violence against women – could be solved if the law-abiding public were allowed to carry concealed weapons, he believes.

Though SCC occasionally has helped reporters on stories, more problems still would be fixed if the media (“the enemy”) butted out, or understood the world a little more as he does.

The frequent airing of footage of officer Anthony Abbate beating a barwoman -- a common gripe among officers who say they abhor his actions -- served “no purpose except to inflame the viewership,” and was “an easy club to beat the department with every time someone gets accused of something,” SCC says.

“The media lives in a dreamworld where everybody would get along if we sat down and talked to each other and held hands and sang hymns.

“The media doesn’t understand what it’s like to drive down dark alleys, to run towards the sound of gunfire, to chase someone over fences and have to tackle and fight someone into handcuffs, or respond to your fifth domestic disturbance call of the night and see the same dysfunctional pattern repeated all over again, or respond to a ‘man shot’ call and see blood and brains spilled all over the sidewalk, and if you’re really quick to the
scene, listen to the victim’s last screams, moans or gurgles.”

Reality for cops, which too few citizens realize, is this: “Hundreds of people wake up every single day and their only thought is how are they going to get enough money for their dope habit today? ... They will beg, steal, or stick someone up to get it and if they run into someone who resists, they will beat, stab or shoot you to get what they want.”

Taking aim at Chicago machine

SCC’s fiercest ire is reserved for Chicago’s machine politics and its impact on the department.

“You have a mayor who hates the police micromanaging everything, you have a corrupt promotion system, a toothless union, an apathetic public and open conflict with parts of the citizenry,” he says. “This department has never put the round pegs in the round holes.

“If you have a person qualified for a particular specialty, be it helicopters, snipers, teachers, scuba qualified, etc., why wouldn't you exploit that person's abilities to improve the department as a whole?

“But unless you know someone, have that phone call or are related to some politician, you aren't going to get where you can be the best officer possible.”

If SCC was in charge for a day, he'd disband the CAPS program -- the city’s vaunted and widely copied “community-led” policing model. In his view, CAPS is “sucking money better spent elsewhere, and it hides way too many people who should be on the street working.”

Asked about the accusations of racism that plague his blog, and the department in general, he counters, “There was a quote we read in a book, that coppers worldwide have an intense dislike for the poorest segment of society they serve.

“The example given was a Chicago cop bitching about African-Americans to an NYPD guy, who then had to top him with, “You think that’s bad? Let me tell you about the Puerto Ricans in New York!”

“Are there racists? Sure, they’re everywhere, even in the media, but there are 25 districts and dozens of units where people can try to get if they don’t want to deal with what they don’t like.”

For all their complaints, SCC’s supporters clearly love being police. As one officer, who asked not to be named, said, “The city gives you a car, fills it with gas, lets you carry a gun and tells you to go out and look for trouble.

“You even get a radio to call for friends if the trouble gets too big.

“What’s not to love?”

And as SCC puts it himself, “We have one of the greatest jobs in the world.

“Somehow, we still manage to do some good in people’s lives.”

More than one?

He suggests that he is, in fact, more than one person, although he refuses to disclose how many officers are behind the pen-name.

Between them, they spend up to 20 hours a week updating the Web site, and will “keep it going as long as it’s fun.”

“It’s a hobby,” he said, saying he has no intention to write a book, as other successful bloggers have done, or to cash in any other way.

And the uncertain fate of Second City Dick -- one of half a dozen less-successful imitators, including Second City Sarge, Second City Rookie and Burbs Cop Chicago --serves as a cautionary tale for all police officers who exercise their First Amendment rights too vigorously.

After SCD, a detective, spent a month posting pictures of senior brass and inviting scurrilous and often hilariously libelous comment from his readers (who was sleeping with whom, who was incompetent, who was gay), SCD was apparently outed and the blog suddenly, and permanently, disappeared.

“Truthfully we don’t know what happened to him, but the out-of-control stuff probably contributed to the downfall,” SCC said.

SCC jokes he may have incriminating photos of the mayor and his buddies if and when he is unmasked, “and if we didn’t, we could create them.”

If and when he is, as many believe he ultimately will be, he said, “We’d deny it.

“If pressed, there’s always the delete blog button in the control panel of e-blogger.

“We pull the plug and fade away. But don’t kid yourself, the void would be filled eventually. Nature abhors a vacuum.”

Kim Janssen can be reached at kjanssen@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5998.